I have edit the book in microsoft word and created a Table of Contents and saved as epub.

You didn't create a TOC in Word you created a inline page that links to other parts of the book.

That's a table of contents.
A Word table of contents is an inline page of links to other parts of the document.
An EPUB table of contents is generated by the EPUB reader from the content coded in the NCX file.
A MOBI/Kindle table of contents is an inline set of links to other parts of the book coded into the HTML content of the book, with a guide item pointer to the location of that inline set of links which the MOBI reader uses to enable the user to jump to that list of links from anywhere else in the book.
The fact that they are provided in different formats doesn't make any one format more valid than another as a table of contents. Each is appropriate to its own format, and each is a table of contents.

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Originally Posted by dwanthny

Quote:

Originally Posted by medwatt

In Calibre, I convert to mobi and I get two TOC though the one autogenerated by Calibre is the one that gets linked to when I select Table of Contents from my kindle menu.

You get one TOC and a inline link page that you created.

You get two inline tables of contents - one is the original one in its original position, the other is created by Calibre and placed at the end of the book. Calibre inserts a pointer in the MOBI file to the Calibre-generated inline table of contents.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Quote:

Originally Posted by medwatt

Ok, I then uncheck the Do Not Add TOC to book or Force use of autogenerated TOC, and though it didn't produce one, I was unable to find a link to my TOC through the kindle menu.

You essentially told it not to create a link from the menu button to a TOC by disabling the creation of a TOC.

medwatt is looking for a way of getting Calibre to create a pointer in the resulting MOBI file to their original inline TOC, rather than generating an additional inline TOC and creating a pointer to that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Quote:

Originally Posted by medwatt

Like when using Mobipocket creator, I can simply add guide item and link to any location through a bookmark.

If you can do it in Mobicreator then you might want to consider using that.

You then have a MOBI file which doesn't include an NCX file (unless you manually create the NCX file, do a partial build of the MOBI file, manually edit the OPF file to insert a link to the NCX file, then do a final build of the MOBI file).

Quote:

Originally Posted by dwanthny

I have yet to buy a book from Amazon that had a inline TOC at the beginning of the book.

Few novels have an inline TOC, simply because a list of "Chapter One", "Chapter Two", etc, is of little practical use to anyone, nor does it provide an overview of the content of the book. Most non-fiction MOBI/Kindle books have an inline TOC since it is useful to have one (and an inline TOC is the only kind of TOC the user will be presented with, in a MOBI reader), and most of those are at the beginning of the book (in the same place you'd expect to find such a TOC in a paper book), since the TOC is then included in the free sample, and provides prospective purchasers with a good overview of the book's content.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Of course if I wanted to find out how to link to a TOC I created for a Mobi book I would probably ask the question in the Mobi forum where people who create Mobi books would presumably have the expertise to help you.

Since medwatt is asking if there's any way, and how, to get Calibre to create a pointer to an existing inline TOC rather than only inserting a pointer to a Calibre-generated inline TOC, when using Calibre to convert an ebook to MOBI format, asking the question in the Calibre Conversion forum seems appropriate to me.